Concern over the current political environment in the Middle East is driving some companies towards solutions that can protect their IT infrastructure against attacks from hacking groups.

Fears over collateral damage from politically motivated hackivist groups, such as Anonymous and Lulzsec, are leading some of the biggest financial organisations, education institutions, and government bodies to seek anti-DDoS technologies, according to Japanese security firm InTecur.

Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, in particular, are the countries where banks, universities, and governments are looking to protect themselves and their IT infrastructures. According to the company’s general manager for the Middle East Mohammed Bolouri, a combination of the current political situation and economic malaise in Iran and Pakistan are causing headaches for businesses and government bodies.

“Iran and Pakistan are less technologically advanced than some of the other countries in the region,” said Bolouri. “Because of that, hackers have much more freedom to test and to target businesses. We’ve even seen government websites attacked in recent months.”

He pointed to the recent attacks on Iran’s government IT infrastructure by Anonymous as one of the key reasons for companies looking to protect themselves. He said that while they don’t believe they will be targeted for the same reasons, concerns over the ease with which the hackers infiltrated a government’s IT system has raised worries over the safety of their own systems.

“We have had some companies come to us saying they are already suffering from DDoS attacks,” he said. “Companies from all over the Middle East have said that they are looking for a solution that would help them cope with these sorts of attacks on their IT infrastructure.”

“They complained that the traditional firewall solutions they have in place to deal with unwanted intrusions simply were not up to the challenge of dealing with the type of attacks they are experiencing,” he added.

He said that companies were increasingly turning to solutions such as ADS or anti-denial of service servers.

However, Bolouri was keen to stress that it is extremely unlikely that Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan were the only countries suffering from such attacks. “There is little transparency in the region. Companies don’t have to say they’ve been attacked.”